


One day I'll breathe again

by ferggirl



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-06
Updated: 2014-03-06
Packaged: 2018-01-14 17:54:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,953
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1275592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferggirl/pseuds/ferggirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He tried, for a while, to resist the pull of her. The way her eyes lit up when she made progress, the way she laughed at him when he tried to pull rank. How she saw everyone else’s pain, as well as her own. The way her fingers felt as they brushed his skin, bandaging another wound with quiet efficiency.</p>
<p>But it wasn’t in his power to control. </p>
<p>She was the sun and he was just a satellite, drawn into her orbit to stay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	One day I'll breathe again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [OpenPandorasBox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/OpenPandorasBox/gifts).



> For Ana. Scruff payback. She knows what she did.

It was Grant they warned when he caught himself staring and caught her smiling back. 

Skye and Fitz and Coulson, they all came to him. 

_Don’t break her heart._

He tried, for a while, to resist the pull of her. The way her eyes lit up when she made progress, the way she laughed at him when he tried to pull rank. How she saw everyone else’s pain, as well as her own. The way her fingers felt as they brushed his skin, bandaging another wound with quiet efficiency.

But it wasn’t in his power to control. 

She was the sun and he was just a satellite, drawn into her orbit to stay. He tried to be honest, upfront with her. He didn’t pretend to be happy if he wasn’t and she never asked him to. The sex was a release, but it was more than that, too, and she smiled when he told her. 

They established a routine, almost a rhythm. Her eyes still lit up at an exciting discovery, and now they also glowed when he said her name. He still used the heavy bag after missions to work off the adrenaline, but he knew she’d be waiting for him in the lounge afterward, with popcorn and an incredibly stupid movie. 

It was nice. 

They fought sometimes, the worst resulting in standoffs for days, with Skye and Fitz looking daggers in his direction. Once, Coulson called him into his office and reminded him about Barrow, Alaska, and Grant’s gut churned until Coulson’s voice dropped back to normal levels.

"Don’t make me get involved," he said tiredly, "fix it."

And unspoken, that warning echoed through the room:  _don’t break her heart._

They fixed it, together. They always did. 

Until they didn’t. There was a difference to that fight. An edge of desperation in her voice, of defeat in her eyes. He didn’t know what had put them there, couldn’t get her to tell him. 

When she walked out of his room, she said goodbye. It felt like a sword through the chest. He was immobilized, stunned and broken, 

He’d been so careful watching out for her heart, he’d forgotten to guard his own. 

By the time he could breathe again, a couple of hours at most, she was gone. 

******

It took them a week to piece it together. The insidious ways the Clairvoyant had worn her down. Her parents, her friends, the team, and finally, Grant. There was a locked drawer in the lab, full of the photos she couldn’t escape. All of the times they’d been in the crosshairs and her tormentors had taken a picture instead of pulling the trigger. 

They all knew what -  _who -_  she’d choose if it came down to it. She’d jumped off a plane for them, fallen on a grenade. She was not lacking in bravery. 

Also in the drawer were notes in secret, messy handwriting that she likely hadn’t even looked at as she’d written them. Explanations, fixes, codes and apologies. 

All that she had put wrong, she had left them instructions to mend. 

Except him. There was no note for him.

Fitz was sure she had a plan. She’d never just leave them, he insisted, she’s off somewhere being brilliant. Fighting back. 

Grant had seen the defeat in her eyes. He hadn’t understood, then. He thought he did now.

They looked for a year, but it was like she had never existed. Jemma Simmons was a fever dream that kept them all up at night. 

Mike Peterson, on the other hand, was everywhere. Unstoppable, with his Deathlok improvements and super strength defeating them at every turn. SHIELD was falling apart around them when they cornered him at last, thanks in part to the notes Jemma had left behind. 

Peterson looked up from the files he was scanning as the Hub burned and Grant saw regret pass over his face. Then he raised a hand and pointed quietly at his one good eye. 

They had suspected, but never known for sure. When Mike turned to Skye, there were tears in her eyes. 

But she played her part. She let her grief look like anger, and gave him as much time as she could. Before the small explosive device in his eye took him down, Mike managed to say two things. To Skye: _tell Ace one day._ Then he turned to Grant and just said:  _she’s here._

They left him lying there, still and silent. There was no time for respect. They had to find her before she joined him.

She was seven floors up. 

Fitz had caught the frequency of the kill signal when Mike was taken down, and frantically reprogrammed the jammer he’d been working on for months. Grant asked to be first through the door. 

Fury’s old office had a balcony. Just a little one, somewhere to step out and breathe, or sneak a cigarette after a particularly long day. Grant almost fell to his knees when he saw her standing on it, her brown hair waving in the wind, looking down at the destruction. 

He depressed the switch, and the electronics in the room buzzed, then went quiet. He saw her knuckles tighten on the railing, but otherwise she didn’t flinch. 

"How long do I have?"

"Fitz thinks this will hold for twenty minutes, at least.  _Jemma_.”

She turned then, finally looking at him. She was thinner, drawn, and the weight of the last year sat heavily in her eyes. 

"I don’t suppose you brought surgical equipment?"

"Coulson’s run to sick bay, give him some time."

"There’s no time. You should have sent May in," she said grimly. "She would do what’s required."

"Coulson’s coming." He repeated it, easing toward her. 

"The second it comes back online, I’m dead," she reminded him. "I’d rather die at May’s hand than at theirs."

"How about no one else dies today?"

"No, oh no," she faltered for a moment, the old, softer Jemma shining through in her dismay. "Mike?"

He nodded, and she turned away from him, looking back out over the destruction. ”I saw what happened to Akela Amador. I know what’s next.”

He made a frustrated noise. How could she think they’d let anyone take her away from them again? 

_Because you let it happen a year ago,_ he reminded himself. 

"They want to come in," he said after a moment. "Fitz. Skye. Everyone misses you."

"Don’t make me do this. See them." Her voice was low and desperate. "Let them remember me as I was."

The metal floor of the balcony wobbled when Grant walked out next to her. He put his hand close enough to trade heat, but not touching, on the railing. 

"You’ve been saving us," he said. "All year. We aren’t idiots. Those notes… they would have gotten to the rest of us long before this without you standing in the way."

She bit her lip, but did not answer. 

"You’re so damn brave, Jemma. Be brave for 16 more minutes. Let us bring you home."

He knew everyone outside the room was listening, had been listening and watching the clock tick away the precious seconds. They all held their breath while she decided. 

When her hand covered his, it was like the world righted itself in the space of a breath.

He gasped the go signal, and Coulson burst through the doors, the rest of the team hot on his heels. Fitz and May cleared the director’s desk and started setting up the impromptu surgery. 

Jemma squeezed his hand, her nails biting into his skin, then turned to face the team with a ghost of her determined smile on her face. ”Fine, but you’re keeping me awake and May’s the one pulling my eye out of my head.”

There was a flurry of movement and talking and last minute adjustments. Then she was on the table and Skye was helping administer the local anesthesia while May listened intently to Jemma’s instructions on how to remove the tissue. Grant sagged back against the balcony, relief draining the strength from his legs and turning his knees to jello. 

He recovered enough to play his part, holding her head still and murmuring encouragement into her ear to distract himself. Jemma was too brave to need distracting. 

******

Days later, when she had had some time to feel safe and Fitz had stopped sleeping on her floor and she’d hugged her parents again, he went looking for her. She was standing in the lab, looking around it with her one good eye and smiling. 

His soul rejoiced to see her there, whole and free. He opened his mouth to tell her. 

"You broke my heart" came out instead. 

She sighed and her smile dimmed as she turned to look at him. 

"I know." Her eye tracked his movement across the floor, watched him stop a few feet from her. "I’m not sorry. It was that or kill you. I much prefer you breathing."

"Why, Jemma? All those secret notes - why not slip one to me? We could have stopped this before it started."

She shook her head. “I’m not sorry,” she repeated. “It kept you, all of you, alive.”

Grant crossed and uncrossed his arms. He had another question, but didn’t know how to ask. 

"You know when it started," she said tiredly, reading the intention on his face. "So you know it was long after…  _we_  happened.”

"How much," he swallowed, looking for the right words. "Did they make you… was it not what you wanted? This is your team as much as it is mine and if you need me to go…"

He was taut and terrified to hear what was going to come out of her mouth. It took her a minute to piece the real question together from the fragments. Then her eye widened. 

"Oh god," she whispered. "You don’t think…? No, you obviously do think." She pressed a hand to the back of her mouth and muffled a string of curses. "No. Never. Not like that."

He crossed the room in two strides and pulled her into his arms. She still fit perfectly over his heart. He let his lips settle in her hair, his stubble catching on the fine strands, and let the joy of being given back what they’d had be enough for now.

When she stepped back, he told himself to let her go.  

"The day we fought," she said, looking up at him, "I’d been given a deadline. Leave and ensure I was not followed, or they would kill everyone on the plane."

"So you jumped." Out of a plane. On a grenade. Away from her safety net. Where he could not catch her. 

 ”I was no closer to figuring out how to remove the damn thing,” she poked at her eyepatch irritably. “They’d evolved. I needed time. It was a calculated risk.”

"The jammer specs we found in Barcelona?"

"Fitz said he found those helpful."

"What about Milan? Bangkok? Was not telling me, not telling  _us_  really worth all of that pain?”

She bit her lip and looked away. “I’ll have to live with what I’ve done. I broke the rules whenever I could, minimized casualties. But you’re standing here in front of me, which means I’m not sorry.”

He sank onto a stool and stared at her. There was a flatness to her voice, a defensive set of her shoulders that he recognized. He hated to see that in her. Hated that she had been driven to that. 

Driven away from him. 

"I never said it, but I loved you." His voice caught, the words spilling out rough and sorrowful. 

Her smile was infinitely sad. “You never said it, but I knew.” 


End file.
